Page 39 of Wish You Were Her
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Subject: Late Show
Dear Jonah,
Your name is everywhere!! I saw the pictures!! What the hell is going on in that tiny town?!
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RE: Nightmare
I’m so sorry. It’s been a hurricane. Allegra Brooks is the glamorous visitor to Lake Pristine. I can’t say much more about her, as I want to respect her privacy, but I didn’t think about you seeing my name all over the media circus.
Jonah.
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Subject: What?!
Allegra Brooks!! That girl from that fantasy show?! I saw the pictures; I couldn’t really believe that you’re the same person as the guy in those pictures. Are you okay? Has she ditched you? Is she a total diva? What on earth has been going on?
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RE: Allegra Brooks.
Like I said, private. You work in social media. Do you have any advice? I’m not looking at what’s being said anymore, but I can imagine. What can I do to make it better?
Jonah x
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Subject: Social Media
Sadly, the one constant that I have seen in my professional life is that men always come out okay on the other side.
Men’s misdemeanors are overlooked while women are punished for assumptions and associations.
You’re going to be okay. You haven’t even done anything wrong.
Give it time. Let people move on to the next cycle.
And just remind yourself that you haven’t hurt anyone, you’re just the subject of gossip.
And continually tell yourself that it’s weird for people to care so much about strangers.
Hope that helps.
A friend.
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RE: Social Media
It does help but I should have been clearer. I’m wondering how I can make it easier for Allegra.
Jonah x
Allegra stared at his latest email and felt a flush of something she couldn’t label.
She put the phone to one side, deciding to deal with practical, less overwhelming things instead.
She had a few weeks left of her summer break, so to speak, before the premiere for Maybe in Waiting .
Then, the publicity tour would need her for appearances.
She hoped these pictures would be yesterday’s news by then.
She had made a date with Jasper to come and see the apartment, as she urgently wanted to get started on the bedroom.
She loved that Jasper had a different way of working as a designer, and that she was keen to be deeply collaborative with Allegra.
There was a queen-size bed in Allegra’s bedroom suite and nothing else. Her phone lay on the floorboards, charging, and it was the only light in the dark room. She lay back against the Egyptian cotton and closed her eyes. In the dark, she wished he was lying next to her.
Her phone flashed as a voice note arrived from Jasper.
When Allegra played it, the designer’s voice could be heard saying, “Hey, so, I have a slightly tipsy, lovesick man at my boyfriend’s cinema right now and he won’t stop talking about you.
I was wondering if it would be okay (when he’s sober) for me to give him your personal number?
Totally okay if not, he doesn’t even know I’m asking you so won’t know if you said no. ”
Allegra hesitated. She liked Jonah, even more than she wanted to admit. But she didn’t want him to try and make up for what happened at the Lakehouse. She didn’t want him to reach out to her from a place of guilt.
Now that she was back in the barren, isolated apartment in the city—it was hard for her to trust.
But she gave Jasper the okay. The heart wanted things, things that the head had been told were not possible.
Miles away in Lake Pristine, Jonah tried to slip into his bedroom without crossing paths with his mother.
He had just fired off a risky email to a tiny press he admired in the city.
They would often bring the bookshop their latest releases by hand, they had no money, but he loved what they printed.
He hoped that, when they read his email in the morning, they would overlook the late hour of its arrival.
He quietly washed his face, brushed his teeth and he was about to slide into his bedroom when all of the apartment was suddenly bathed in light.
His mother stood in her bathrobe by the living room door.
“Hey,” Jonah said, trying to sound as sober as possible. “Thought you were asleep.”
“Nope. Wide awake, worrying about you.”
“I’m fine, Ma.”
“No, you’re not fine. Those pictures are everywhere. I heard all about what happened between you and Simon. His father told me in the checkout line. Said he’s nursing a real shiner on his face.”
“Serves him right for what he did.”
“Jonah—”
“I applied for a job tonight,” he said, and at that, something changed between them, in their home, forever.
His mother stared at him. “You what?”
“Matuschek Press. In the city. One of their editors got stolen by a corporate publisher so there’s an opening for an assistant. I applied.”
“You’re eighteen! They’ll hire someone with a degree, Jonah. Someone with more experience.”
He knew it was her worry speaking.
“Maybe not. They don’t have a lot of money to play with.”
“Jonah,” she stepped toward him, looking afraid. “What’s happening? Everything suddenly has to change for you, it seems. These decisions seem to come out of nowhere, because you don’t talk me through your thinking.”
“I can’t talk through my thinking myself, Ma,” he said honestly. “I—you know I can’t. You know I don’t think like you do. Or like most people do.”
“I know,” she said despondently. “But this is all just…”
“It’s time, Ma,” he said gently. “I keep thinking about graduation. Sitting there, everyone heading off to bigger things. Teachers who told me I would never even pass finals asking where I’m going next. I’m staying at Brooks and working for George, I would say. And I believed it.”
“It’s a wonderful job and it suits you so well,” his mother said and Jonah could tell by her tone that the news of his firing had not reached her. “You love working there.”
“I do. I did ,” he acknowledged. “It was an amazing job. But I’m not supposed to be there anymore.
George never let me buy in certain titles, exciting titles.
He never will. He can’t stand books about relationships breaking down because his did.
He’s snobbish about new authors. So, if I can’t fill the shop with the stories I want, I have to go out and write them myself. ”
Vivienne Thorne exhaled and rubbed her temples. She looked around the small apartment they shared, the one they had lived in their whole lives.
“I thought you might want to take over the shop,” she said, her tone a little desperate. It wasn’t a conversation they had even danced around before.
“You can’t keep me here, Ma,” he said, seeing right through her. “I’m running on empty. I know I’m never on everyone else’s schedule, but it’s now. I need to go.”
He moved into his bedroom, switching on the small lamp by his pillow and taking his shoes off. His mother moved to lean in the doorway, knowing that he was fixed on it and there was little she could say to dissuade him from his course.
“Is this about her?”
Jonah paused for the smallest second as he put his shoes away, his back to his mother. When he turned to face her, he wore a grim expression. “Yes.”
“She’s very special, Jonah. I know it, I see it. The whole world does. But that’s the whole problem. She’s—”
“Too good for me.”
“No! Not at all. She’s just…”
Jonah couldn’t blame his mother for having trouble with words.
Allegra was not “just” anything. He had felt so as he was emailing his elusive pen-pal, the one who seemed further and further away every single day.
It was impossible to describe Allegra. He knew the human.
The girl with the mole on her neck. The girl who would only say “bless you” twice—if you sneezed a third time, she was silent.
The girl who picked at her lips when she was nervous.
The girl who carried her own hot sauce around.
The girl who stared off into space, sometimes for minutes on end.
The girl who only made eye contact when she was listening to you, rarely when she was speaking to you.
The girl who loathed smelly cheese. The girl who unconsciously mimicked people’s accents.
The girl whose entire face transformed when she laughed.
His Allegra. The one millions would never know. The one he had earned through one summer of working with her, and one night in a glass house.
“She has people all over the world chasing her down, Jonah,” his mother said, and she sounded sadder than he had ever heard her. “How can anyone compete with that?”
“Because I don’t want to chase her down,” Jonah said. “I want to stand still with her.”
Allegra slept late and, on waking, felt an old wound twinge. Her chest felt as though someone had casually placed a piano on top of it during the night. Each breath she took felt labored and painful.
It was how her lungs had felt when she was ill with pneumonia.
She fired off a text to Jasper, who was due at the apartment for a consultation.
It hurt to get out of bed, she realized, as she staggered to the bathroom.
She brushed her teeth with great difficulty and tried to splash some warm water on her face, but it soon became clear that standing and walking were only making the problem worse.
She stumbled back into bed and must have slept for another hour, as she woke to the sound of Jasper calling her phone.
“Hey,” croaked Allegra.
“God, you sound terrible,” Jasper replied, her voice full of concern. “Listen, someone got wind that you’re not well and… can I let him up?”
Understanding hit Allegra and she closed her eyes. Her hair was a long mass of unbrushed tresses, she had no makeup on, and she was wearing nothing but an old t-shirt and underwear.